Page 40 of Omega Hunted

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I don’t have a family. I don’t have a home.”

“I handle what comes to my gate.” I kept my gaze fixed on him. “And I’m not asking for your life story, but I need enough to know who I’m watching for.”

“How much money?”

“Two million.” His eyes widened. “I expected higher, but if whoever posted it doesn’t want to make your pure bloodline general knowledge, then they won’t post high. Two million is a solid amount of money to hunters.”

“Are you tempted to collect on the bounty?” he asked, staring at me.

My wolf snarled; my head hurt. “I swear no amount of money would make me hand you over to anyone.”

“It’s a lot of money.”

I gestured around me. “I have enough money.”

“You could have more.”

“Stop!” I growled. “I said no amount of money.”

Soren was confused, then set his fork down and stared at the table, and his hand moved to his belly as he sighed. “What did you hear in my nightmares?”

“Names, I think. One of them was Malachai?” I didn’t add that Soren had been so loud that I’d nearly jimmied the lock and forced my way in. Whoever this fucking guy was, he was dead if I ever met him.

“Malachai,” he corrected, and tears welled in his eyes, which he blinked back as if he couldn’t bear to cry. “He’s the alpha who they made… he’s the one who… he’s my baby’s father.”

“Can I have a last name?”

“Dalton.”

“Dalton?” He couldn’t mean the Dalton family, could he? His jaw tensed, and then he deflated, and the rest came out staccato and quiet. “Old money. Old alliances. Tigers.” He gazed at me as I put two and two together. Malachai Dalton. The Daltons sat somewhere beyond wealth, their empire built on money, power, and organized crime. “My family and his have been arranging things between them for three generations because our cats are the closest genetic match.” His lips twisted. “I wasn’t a good omega because I said no to being forcibly bred, and he wasn’t a good alpha because he was already bonded to another omega, one from a bloodline that was far from pure, and refused to go through with getting me pregnant. My brother forced the mating.”

“How?”

“My brother had a gun to Malachai’s omega’s head… Gabe was terrified, Malachai was crying…” He seemed lost in memory, and I didn’t push. “My brother let them go after, but after… at Center 14, he took pleasure in telling me that Asha’s biological father was dead…” Soren swallowed hard. “Then, I was a prisoner at Center 14, out of the picture, locked away there until the baby was born and it would be registered as my alpha brother’s child.”

A log shifted in the stove. My wolf wanted something to act on, and there was nothing here to act on—just a man sitting across from me in my kitchen telling me the stripped version of the worst thing that had happened to him, and the name of a man who’d been forced to carry out something heinous, lost his omega, and took his own life. The mention of war was a punch to the gut.

“Okay,” I said.

“Asha is mine. The Daltons can’t have her. My brother can’t have her.” Soren curled in on himself, and I desperately wanted to reach over to take his hand.

“Okay,” I repeated, and this time, I did reach over but kept my hand close enough that if he wanted to take it, he could. He didn’t move because he didn’t trust me yet, even if I wanted him to.

“And the other name,” I said. “Emric?” It hit me that I recognized the name, in context, but I couldn’t believe it was the Emric I’d heard of.

“My older brother.” Soren’s expression closed. “He wants Asha. Not me. Asha. My brother can’t have children, and she’d be the first kit born into the family in twenty years, and a baby without a named sire reverts to the birth family in the registry—” He stopped and shook his head. “You know how the Omega Registry works.”

“I know how it works,” I said. An omega carries a child. Gestates it, births it, bleeds for it. And if no alpha’s name appears on the Registry paperwork, the child belongs to whoever the Registry designates as the birth family of record. Not the person who gave birth. An omega could do everything right—bond, nest, raise a pup from infancy—and a single clerical fact can undo all of it. No sire named means the child reverts. Like the omega was just… borrowing them.

“Okay,” I said, and he stared at me. Was he expecting me to ask for more? Was he expecting me to go into fight mode? My wolf wanted to fight, but I was the rational part and I had control. Tenuous right now, but control was there. “Okay,” I said again. “That’s what I needed. Thank you.”

I took my plate to the sink.

“What are you going to do with what I told you?” he asked, sounding fearful.

“Keep watching the road.”

“You can’t win against my family. They have money and power and…”